As you may know, the global economic depression has hit the media hard, due in large part to the fact that ad rates are in the toilet. OSNews is in the same boat. Despite the fact that we still have good advertisers, our income from advertising this year will only be a fraction of what it was last year. We probably won't make enough to cover our costs. Other news sites, as they've seen revenue decrease, have responded with more, and more intrusive, advertising. We don' t want to do that. We feel we have a covenant with our readers. If you'll be respectful of our need to run ads, we'll be respectful of your need to read the site without having ads shoved down your throat. Please read on, for more discussion of our ad "covenant," and a plea for help, including a plea to all Adblock users to please unblock OSNews.

I recall paying for membership at one point; I notice that I get ads now, so I assume that it expired. I saw no notice, however. It's no wonder that the number of subscriptions is small if there's no attempt at retention.

You have or had a deal with Amazon for buying books (and other products?) through the site for a small cut. If that's the case, make that a permanent part of the site and remind folks now and again (putting it somewhere high on the first page -- "above the fold" as they say in the newspaper business -- would suffice. I suggested this privately to someone before (probably Adam or Thom) and the response was they didn't want to do anything quite that high profile, and wanted to use it only when doing an article on a book. I'd prefer it to a lot of extra adware and articles such as this, however.